


No Champions

by loopah



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crime Fighting, Drug Addiction, Family Drama, Friendship, Human Trafficking, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Leon being a good brother, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, Secret Identity, Underage Drinking, dumb chapter titles, lots of swear words probably, so many final fantasy references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopah/pseuds/loopah
Summary: or, In Which The Teenaged Superhero Foils Felons, Battles Baddies, Bleeds Profusely, Catches Fire, Eats Meatloaf, Gets Detention, Quits Lacrosse, Flirts on Rooftops, Wears a Thong, Trends on Twitter, Lies a Lot, Drinks Hot Chocolate, Gets Saved by a Damsel, Flunks a Test, Reads the School Paper, and Only Dies Once.





	No Champions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so i've been trying to write a chaptered KH fic for about two years now, but bc school and insecurity and indecision and no inspiration it just... hasn't happened. but i finally found some time between semesters and the KH3 release date being so close really lit a fire under my butt and so now i _finally_ have something!! :-) yay
> 
> i'm probably ~87% happy with it at this point. i might go back and do some editing here and there as time goes on but... idrk. i really would have loved to have published this on the 27th of december bc it would have been 2 years to the day since i published my last fic and that would have been ~poetic~ but i had some family come in from out of town ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ so that isn't what happened. oh well
> 
> but yeah... ratings might go up. we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

There's a little kid smashing his face into the glass that separates the Play Palace from the main body of the restaurant. Sora watches him cover the glass in foggy breath and spit and thinks that it can't be sanitary.

“Firecracker,” Kairi suggests.

Sora pulls a face. “Meh.”

Coming here was a mistake. The whole place smells like old ketchup.

“Firework.” She pops a french fry into her mouth and flips over her AP Chemistry worksheet. By some dark magic it's still unmarred by grease spots.

He stops chewing on his straw. “I don't do fire, Kairi,” he tells her.

“So? Batman doesn't echolocate,” she answers breezily, diving effortlessly into another stoichiometry problem. Sora watches the butterfly charm on the end of her pen swing as she writes. He's uncomfortably warm. They turned off the AC in here. Kairi seems unbothered.

“Yeah, but there's gotta be something less...” He resumes gnawing on his straw as he searches for the word. He thought all these places had been updated by now. This location must be a hold-out. Everything's cracked vinyl and framed pictures of hamburgers. The floors are still carpeted.

“Gimmicky?” Kairi offers. She stops to dip two fries into her milkshake. There's a dusty fake fern behind her head.

Sora leans back in his chair. “Yeah.” He finished his burger ten minutes ago and has spent every moment since trying to fathom how Kairi can eat so slow. “Like... Rogue from X-Men.” He considers asking if he can have one of her fries. “Her name has nothing to do with her powers.”

Kairi catches him staring and nudges the fries closer to him. “What _are_ Rogue's powers?”

“I don't know,” Sora says with a shrug. Nabs three of Kairi's fries. “She's Marvel. Roxas was into DC.”

“Maybe you should ask him.”

He paints a picture in his mind's eye of how that would go over. It's a picture of a door being slammed in his face.

“Maybe I would if he didn't fucking hate me so bad,” he grumbles. He looks on blankly as Kairi continues to weave her confusing web of letters, numbers, and symbols. Watching her do homework always makes him feel stupid, the way she sails through every question with no problem when he's spent whole hours on single equations, sitting at the kitchen table and not understanding even as Leon sits right next to him and holds his hand through every step of the process. And that's in remedial math, where the questions aren't even half as hard.

“Doesn't that bother you?” She continues with her speedy calculations. “If my twin was ignoring me it would drive me up the wall.”

“Thanks, it's the worst.”

“Sorry.” There's a lull in the conversation as Kairi powers through to the end of the problem. She neatly rewrites her final answer and draws a tidy box around it. She looks up at Sora. “Do you have any idea why?”

“No,” Sora says. “Roxas doesn't give reasons. Roxas doesn't even have reasons. He just decides when he wants to be mad at me. I'm pretty sure he does it randomly.”

Kairi puts the plastic dome-shaped lid back on her milkshake cup and slides her miraculously non-greasy homework back into her binder. “Maybe he's jealous,” she says. And when Sora scoffs, she elaborates. “It's like if you were super into dragons. And you read all the books about dragons, and see all the movies about dragons, and collect dragon action figures.” She tucks the binder into her backpack. “And then one day your twin brother comes to you and says, 'Hey, guess what? I'm totally a dragon.'” She puts some crumpled napkins and a used ketchup packet into her empty burger box. “You would be crushed. And you'd be super resentful and spend your whole life thinking 'why him' and wondering why God hates you because he's a dragon and you're not even though you shared the same womb.”

“Or I would understand that my dragon brother never _asked_ to be a dragon, and that he's not just doing it to piss me off, and that being a dragon is actually really hard and really scary because if you're not super duper careful all the time you might accidentally end up _incinerating somebody,_ ” Sora rebuts, frowning.

Kairi doesn't argue. “Well, anyway,” she says, waving a well-manicured hand. “You should come over so I can do some fine tuning. It's basically finished, I just wanna make sure everything fits right.”

“Okay.”

“And I'm not gonna eat any more fries, so you can finish them off.”

“Score.” He swipes the box from her. “What do you think about Slingshot?”

“Slingshot isn't terrible.” Kairi sips her shake. “Catapult.”

Sora wrinkles his nose. “Nah.”

“Yeah, that's not as good,” she agrees. Then she shrugs and stands up. “I'll keep thinking. Wanna head home?”

“Sure.” Sora stands up too, tosses his trash onto their shared tray.

“You can carry my bag,” she says, thrusting it out to him. It's pink and fuzzy and no doubt purchased from Urban Outfitters.

He slings it over one shoulder with his own. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” Kairi sails past him. She waits for him by the door as he dumps all their trash and ditches the tray.

“I can't wait for people to see me walking around with my pretty pink backpack.”

Kairi rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “The rain-forests are dying. No one cares what color backpack you're carrying.” She holds the door open for him.

The day is sunny and warm when they step out into it. It's the kind of warm that only starts to feel hot when you stand in direct sunlight for several minutes. Balmy breezes shake the leaves and stir up litter. Summer weather in its final death throes before the start of the school year ushers it into oblivion, laying luscious greens and birdsong to rest in favor of ugly greys and head-colds. Textbook beautiful day.

“So,” Kairi opens as they start walking down the street, toward the entrance to the subway at the end of the next block.

“So?”

“How goes your first week?”

“Fine.” Sora kicks a small stone along for a few steps like a soccer ball.

“Doesn't it kick ass walking the hallways knowing that you own the place?” she asks, eyes twinkling. Long has Kairi awaited to finally become a high school senior. Officially, it’s because of senior superlatives and her finally having a shot at becoming Prom Queen. Of course, Sora knows the real reason is because she loves to accumulate and wield power. And she likes the chicken biscuits they cater in for the monthly Senior Breakfasts.

“Yeah.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Lunch sucked today, though.”

“Did it?” Kairi looks surprised. East Bellevue High is notorious for its relatively palatable school lunches.

“Yeah!” Sora frowns as he thinks back on it. He's been a dedicated fan of the hot lunches provided by the school district for as long as he can remember.

“I ate in Branford's room. I brought my lunch.” She checks the time on her phone and sends off a swift text message. “What was wrong with it?”

“The bread was weird.”

“What?” Kairi snorts. Her lip gloss sparkles in the sunlight.

“Y'know the rolls they always give us on spaghetti day?”

“Oh my god, the buttery ones?”

“Yes!”

“What happened?”

“They're different! They're all dry and bland and depressing.”

They come to a stop at a crosswalk. Kairi mashes the button even though they both watched a young woman in a sharply-tailored pantsuit press it as they approached. “No butter?” she asks in disbelief.

“None.”

“Y'know what it is, though? It's that schoolwide health initiative.” Kairi presses the button again and the DON'T WALK signal turns to a WALK. “It's the same reason you can only get baked chips from the vending machines.” They cross the street, split up in the middle of the crosswalk to bypass a slow-moving couple and rejoin once they've cleared them.

“But I hate health,” Sora whines.

“They're not selling cookies anymore, either.”

His jaw drops. “What?!”

“Isn't it the worst?”

“No Friday cookies?!” He makes sure in the midst of this upsetting revelation to pointedly avert his eyes from the storefront of the Victoria's Secret as they're walking past it – which he does every time, should somebody catch him looking and think he's a pervert.

“That's what Selphie said.” Kairi steps high over a broken Mistic bottle. (Which is sitting out front of a bodega, Sora notices, which means somebody must have paid for it and then fumbled it as soon as they walked out the door. Tragic.)

“My day is ruined. Senior year is ruined.”

“At least you have me,” Kairi says optimistically. Ever the ray of peppy, well-dressed, brown-sugar-and-vanilla-body-spray-smelling sunshine.

“Are you gonna make me cookies?”

“We can make cookies.” She stops him when they reach the subway entrance so she can fish the MetroPass out of her bag. For a moment Sora holds out hope that she'll take it back from him, but she zips it back shut and gives it a pat before bounding merrily down the stairs.

He follows her underground, produces his own card deftly from the slot that's built-in to his cellphone case. “I don't wanna make them. I want you to make them.”

Kairi goes through the turnstile first. “Maybe your hero name should be Cookie Monster.”

Sora gapes at her through the spaces between the bars of the cage-like revolving door. “Oh, shit. That's it.” He scans himself through.

“That's it?” She's grinning when he emerges.

He nods soberly. “That's the one. Definitely.”

“I love it.” She holds out her hands and mercifully relieves him of her bag. “I should sew a cookie on your suit.”

“You're gonna sew cookies to my suit?” Sora marvels as they hang a right. Their voices bounce off the tiled walls of the harshly-lit hallway. The train is already at the platform when it comes into view, sitting motionless with its doors open and its chime sounding for final boarding.

“Not _to_ your suit. _On_ your suit,” Kairi corrects. They break into a light jog. “Like on the chest. Like a logo.”

They manage to make it onboard before the prerecorded voice announces the imminent closing of the doors.

“Eh.” Sora shrugs as he glances around the mostly-empty train car. “I think you should sew them _to_ my suit.” He stays standing as Kairi settles into one of the seats.

“Should I?” Kairi tucks her MetroPass back into her bag. The doors of the train slide noisily shut.

“Yeah.” Sora leans back against a handrail as the train starts to slowly lurch forward. “'Cuz then I'll have a convenient snack whenever I want it.”

 

* * *

 

Kairi's bedroom is insanely well-kept. Her bed is expertly made and furnished with several decorative throw pillows. There's not a single article of discarded clothing on her floor or in her desk chair, which is where Sora accumulates most of his laundry in a sizable pile that only gets bigger and bigger until he can no longer sit on top of it and pretend it isn't there. Her desk is meticulously arranged. She has an entire shelf dedicated to Bath and Body Works candles. She's burning one of them now even though her oil diffuser is already misting out some kind of flowery smell. Sora's always afraid to touch anything in here. He can't help feeling like he's going to smudge something.

He's considering her wall-hanging when a sharp jab redirects his attention. “Ow! Kairi!”

“Hold still!” Kairi scolds him around a mouthful of straight pins. A decorative box full of sewing supplies sits open on her bed.

“That's like the third time you've poked me,” Sora complains. “You got me right in the butt.” He wiggles his unclad fingertips experimentally. She's left it fingerless per his request and he's swallowed up by the rest of it, stretchy black fabric clinging to his body like a second skin. ( _Think Spiderman,_ he said to her, _only without the spiders. Spiders creep me out_.)

“Well if you would hold still, I wouldn't poke you in the butt.” She stands up from where she's kneeling beside him, continues to make her minute adjustments.

“I'm holding still!”

“Is that too tight?” Kairi asks, giving a tug to the fabric about his middle. It's mildly constricting.

“It's a bit of a squeeze.”

“Do you want me to let it out a little bit?”

Sora considers it. He bends forward at the waist and finds his movement unhindered. “Nah,” he tells her, straightening. “It'll keep my gut in place so I don't have to suck in.”

Kairi scoffs. “Oh my god, you do not have a gut.” He can almost hear her rolling her eyes. “You have zero fat deposits. I would kill to be tiny like you. And if you complain about it again I'm gonna stick you on purpose!”

“Ow!” Sora jolts when she stabs him in the back.

“Sorry. That was an accident.” She pulls the last pin from between her teeth and slides it into place. “Alright. Let's see.” She squeezes his shoulders and goes to stand in front of her door, puts several feet of distance between them so she can take in all of him.

He pivots in his place to face her, stands there awkwardly with his arms dangling strangely at his sides. Doesn't know what to do with his hands.

“Oh my god!” Kairi cries. She presses her hands over her heart and Sora doesn't know if that's good or bad. “Lemme see it with the mask?”

He swipes it off her bed and pulls it down over his head to complete the ensemble. He's pleased to learn that the mesh backing Kairi insisted upon putting behind the lenses doesn't inhibit his vision nearly as much as he feared that it would.

Kairi gasps. “Sora.”

“What?”

“You look so good!” She claps her hands together.

“Really?” Sora looks down at his body. He tries to figure out if he should feel different. Because he doesn't. He feels like some asshole wearing spandex.

“Yeah! Look!” Kairi grabs him by the wrist and drags him over toward her closet. She opens it up and makes him stand in front of the full-body mirror that's mounted on the inside of the door.

And it's... not terrible. A little goofy, maybe, simply by virtue of being a superhero costume, but nothing overly gaudy. Kairi's rather particular about of lot of things and it shows in her handiwork. It's well-stitched and thoughtfully designed, black top to bottom with touches of tasteful gray detailing. Sora's glad he left all the major aesthetic choices up to Kairi. He's glad Kairi knows her way around a sewing machine. He's glad Kairi agreed to help in the first place, because God only knows what kind of travesty he'd be zipping around the city in if he tried to make something himself.

A onesie and a ski mask, probably.

Kairi's admiring his reflection over his shoulder, brimming. Probably waiting for him to say something, which she quickly grows tired of. “Do you love it?” she prompts, crossing her arms.

Sora turns to look at it in profile. He shrugs his shoulders just to be difficult. “I mean-”

She grins and swats him on the arm. “Shut up. You love it.”

“It's perfect,” he assures her. He lets her fuss over it for a minute, picking off stray fuzz and posing him this way and that.

“I don't know about that, but it does look good.”

“Kairi.” Sora turns around to face her. “It's perfect,” he insists, putting both hands on her shoulders.

She lets him reel her in and tuck her under his arm for a grateful squeeze. “Only the best for my dashing husband.”

“Thanks, wife.” He smacks a kiss onto her forehead. It's kind of weird with the mask in the way, but whatever. The sentiment is there.

“You're welcome.” She gives his chest a friendly pat and withdraws from his embrace to give the suit another head-to-toe scan. “I'm not quite sure how I feel about this, though.” She reaches out to touch his side.

“What?” Sora searches the spot she's indicated for any obvious issues. There are none.

“This seam here. I think it looks weird,” Kairi murmurs, tracing a line of stitches with her fingers.

“I think it looks fine.”

“That's because you don't know anything about fashion.” She pulls her hand back and tucks it under her chin. And she carries on criticising. “There's a little too much sag in the crotch area too, I think.”

Sora groans. “Oh my god. I'm taking it off.” He takes off the mask as he's walking away from the mirror.

Kairi follows him with her eyes. “Why?”

“Because it's finished and it's fine and you're gonna stare at it 'til you hate it-” He frees his upper half from the suit, peels it down off of his arms. “-and you're gonna spend another two weeks trying to fix it and it still won't be good enough-” Gets it down off his hips then flops back onto Kairi's bed so he can liberate his legs. Apparently when this thing goes on, it really wants to _stay_ on. “-and so you'll screw with it even longer and by the time it's finally done we'll both be eighty.”

“Alright, alright.” Kairi shakes her head. “It's not _totally_ finished, like I said. But it'll have it for you by tomorrow.” She goes to sit down in her chair at her desk and flips open her MacBook. “Oh, yeah.” She closes her MacBook. And she spins around in her chair. "I ordered you a dance belt."

"Didn't we say 'no belts?'" Sora asks. He's finally managed to wrestle the suit off.

"Not that kind of belt." Kairi shakes her head and leans back in her desk chair. She gauges him, standing in her bedroom in his underwear (which would be weird if it was anybody else, but it's _Kairi,_ ) sizes him up with an unreadable expression on her face. And she says, after her moment of silent scrutiny, "It's a thong."

Sora stops. His arm freezes in mid-transit as he's reaching to pick his shirt up off the floor. "I'm sorry?" His eyebrows are lifted.

"It's like a jockstrap. It'll keep you-” She holds her hand palm-up in the air, curls and uncurls her fingers in a highly upsetting claw-like manner. "Snug."

Sora frowns. And he grabs his T-shirt. And he stands up. And he opens his mouth. And nothing comes out. So he shuts it. And then he opens it again. "Um. Couldn't I just wear briefs?"

"Sora," Kairi says sweetly, leaning forward in her chair. "Do you know much how much time I've wasted making this costume so you can have something to go parading around the city in like a crazy little fruit loop?" She doesn't give him time to respond. "Weeks. Weeks of my life. I've skipped Girl's Night twice to work on it. And if you think I'm going to let you ruin weeks of sweat and tears and jabbing myself in the fingertips with all these motherfucking sewing pins with a _panty line_ , then you are in for a very. Rude. Awakening." She leans back in her desk chair and steeples her fingers, bearing a horrifying resemblance to an Italian mob boss. "We on the same page?"

"Yes,” Sora squeaks wimpily.

"Good." She pivots her seat back around so her back is to him once again. Then she reopens her MacBook and fires up her browser. “Now put your pants back on. We'll watch Bob's Burgers.”

 

* * *

 

He comes home to a dark house.

That's the first red flag.

The frontmost room's the dining room and they keep it dark anyway. They haven't eaten a meal in there in years. It wouldn't get any foot traffic at all if that wasn't where the front door was. If it was a side room they'd probably keep it closed off, draw the heavy velvet drapes and just forget about it. It's the only room that hasn't been touched in terms of décor, the only one they didn't scrub entirely and start over fresh in their misguided attempt to stamp out every trace of Her. An oblong cherry dining table, red damask slipcovers on all of the chairs. A red and gold Aubusson rug.

The kitchen connects and the lights are off in there, too. It's dim save the green glow from the digital numbers displaying the wrong time on the clock that's built into the console of the stove.

The living room can be accessed from the kitchen or the dining room, and it's also mostly devoid of light but for the faint and fading dusklight that shines in from the back yard through the tall windows and casts everything in shades of misty blue. It's by this light that Sora spies Roxas slumping low on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table and his fingers winding absent-mindedly in the lengths of his hair. He's staring at the ground instead of at his phone screen and it gives Sora an uh-oh feeling because Roxas _lives_ with his nose in his phone, and without the harsh light illuminating his face and cutting it into odd angles he looks like a completely different person.

Sora would ask what was up if he wasn't so sure he'd be ignored.

He has a feeling he's about to find out, though, because Leon flips on a light to herald his arrival from the short hallway on the other side of the living room. It shines down on him from overhead like the glow of a halo. He looks more angelic in the hey-it's-time-for-the-Apocalypse-and-I'm-here-to-devastate-the-Earth way than in the cute-winged-baby way.

“Perfect timing,” he says to Sora, before pointing to the couch. “Sit.”

Sora walks gingerly across the carpet and slowly lowers himself to sit next to Roxas, who doesn't look at him. He watches Leon click on a table lamp that fills the room not quite to the corners with warm yellow light from a low-wattage bulb before coming to stand in front of them on the other side of the coffee table. And he just kind of stands there. With his back to the lamp, his face is cast in shadow, so Sora has to work to make out his expression. It's cryptically neutral. He's still got his work clothes on; big heavy boots and a sturdy pair of utility pants, faded denim shirt and all of it covered in a fine layer of soot. Hands are especially grimy where they rest down at his sides, ink-black fingers drumming idly against his legs.

There's a long moment of drawn out silence as they all wait for Leon to say something. But he just keeps standing there, quietly, and Sora's becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

So he speaks first. “Am I in trouble?” he asks timidly.

Leon looks at him. “Did you do something?” he asks back. He sounds conversational rather than accusatory, which may or may not be a good sign. Either everything's normal and nobody's in trouble, or he's doing that thing he does when he's _really_ mad where he just acts like everything's normal and nobody's in trouble when in fact he's unbelievably furious and about to rain down hellfire.

Sora hesitates. This could be a trap. “No?” he chances.

Leon shrugs. “Then no,” he says calmly. There's not an incredible amount of tension in his shoulders, which might mean they're in a Scenario A situation. It's too early to tell. He sticks his dirty hands in his pockets. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Sora answers.

“Roxas?” Leon looks to the other end of the couch.

Roxas's eyes slowly raise up from the floor. “I mean. It's school,” he says innocuously. So he's sensing out a bad vibe, too.

“Yeah, well.” Leon glances over toward the kitchen and squeezes the back of his neck. “Stick it out 'til June and you won't ever have to do it again. You get your schedule sorted out?” He turns his eyes back to Roxas, who nods his head.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” There's a beat. “When's practice start up again?” Leon asks Sora.

“Tomorrow,” Sora says, frowning. Something is definitely wrong. Leon's only maintaining eye contact for a few seconds at a time.

“Still ends at five?” Plus the small talk. Not that all of their talk isn't small talk – with Leon being so much older than them, there's really not a lot they have in common. Added to the fact that he's usually not home for more than a few hours at a time, it makes sense that their conversations tend to swim on the shallow end of the pool. But small talk _on top_ of shifty eyes is not normal.

Sora nods.

Leon mirrors it. “Alright. Homework?”

“Math,” Sora tells him.

“None,” Roxas says.

“You should knock it out after dinner,” Leon says to Sora. “We'll watch a show or something.”

“'Kay.”

“Is pizza okay? I know it's been-” Leon's eyes default back to the kitchen. He huffs a short laugh, which is an odd thing for someone do without smiling. “Like, the Week of Pizza. I just...” He shakes his head and trails off, sounding tired. “I'll cook something this weekend. Okay?”

“Pizza's fine,” Sora says for both of them. Roxas doesn't object. He's looking at Leon the way that Sora's looking at Leon, with confusion and concern.

“Cool.” If Leon notices the strange look on their faces, he doesn't say anything about it. Instead, he puts his hands on his hips. “Roxas, since you got nothin' else to do, want you to do a load of laundry. Sora can help you fold.” He gives up on eye contact altogether and starts talking to the coffee table.

“Yep,” Roxas confirms, sharing a strange look with Sora. It's the first time he's looked at him instead of through him in months.

Leon pushes up his sleeve and scrubs at his eyes with the clean back of his wrist. It looks like he's wearing dirt gloves. “Thank you for taking the trash out like I asked you to. And Sora, thanks for vacuuming. You guys are a big help.”

“Are you dying?” Sora asks him finally.

Leon snorts. “No,” he says, shaking his head.

“You just seem kinda...” He doesn't want to go with 'bizarre.' That feels mean. “Sad.”

Leon looks straight up at the ceiling. And he opens his mouth and moves it but no sound comes out. Sora's stomach drops. He's seen Leon do this once before, years ago. He's rehearsing for the delivery of a really shitty piece of news, only this time he isn't crying. Sora can only hope that that means whatever he's about to say won't be as bad as the thing he said before.

“I might lose my job,” Leon says. And he looks back down at Sora and Roxas, shoves his hands into his pockets once again.

The silence that follows is weird. It's a dismayed silence, because it's pretty garbage news. And it's a relieving silence, because it could have been something far worse. And it's an unnerving silence, because of the way that Leon's staring at them. Standing there frozen in the middle of the living room with his shoulders drawn up and his lip pulled between his teeth. He looks like he's a little kid waiting to get yelled at.

Sora and Roxas exchange another look.

“Why?” Sora asks. He tries to make his voice sound as neutral and non-accusing as possible.

Leon rakes his fingers back over his scalp. He's long overdue for a haircut. All three of them are. “They've made a couple changes up at the plant. They're cuttin' the number of employees in half and seniority plays a pretty big part.”

“You've worked there for, like, five years,” Roxas says, furrowing his eyebrows. Immediately indignant on Leon's behalf. He's always been like that. He used to do it for Sora, too.

“I've worked there for six years,” Leon amends, rolling his shoulders. They're probably sore. He's usually pretty sore all over. “I know guys who've been there for twenty.” He pops each of his fingers. “Besides, they got-” He stops and heaves a hefty sigh, gives his head half a shake and rolls his eyes. “Brought this new guy in after Cid retired. Young guy. Anyway.” Leon brushes off the thought. Based off his tone, it's probably pretty safe to assume this new guy's a bit of a cock. “He's had it out for me since I asked him for raise.”

“Let me fight him!” Roxas blurts, slamming down his fist on the arm of the couch. It makes Leon laugh an actual laugh, short and a little weak but his teeth flash and everything. “I'm serious! I'll fuck him up!”

“Language,” Leon minds with his voice full of fondness. He's smiling and it makes Sora smile, and Sora doesn't need to look to know that Roxas is smiling, too. Leon's smile always makes other people smile. Sora wishes he could do it as often as he used to.

It fades pretty quickly and is replaced again by that worried look. “Been lookin' at some other jobs,” Leon says, crossing his arms. “I mean, in the meantime I'll start pickin' up more Diner shifts. So it's not like we'll be totally penniless.” When he looks at them, Sora tries to remember what he looked like when his eyes weren't so sad. “But money's probably gonna be a little tight for a bit. 'Til I find somethin' else.”

“We can help out,” Sora tells him, gesturing in between himself and Roxas. “We can get jobs.” He could. There's a little old lady who sells brownies out of the coffee shop he passes on the way to school. He stops in a couple times a month (Kairi waits outside because she doesn't want to be rude by bringing Starbucks into a coffee place) and buys a S'moreo brownie from her. He pays the dollar-fifty with a five dollar bill and puts the rest straight in her tip jar. She told him last time that she's looking for a new assistant since her grandson went to college.

“School is your job,” Leon says, just like he always says every time one of them raises the prospect of finding a part-time job. “You focus on your grades, you focus on college apps. You can help me out at home by doin' some housework. Alright?”

“Yeah.” It probably wouldn't have worked out, anyway. Sora would have eaten all the product.

“Alright.” Leon rubs his grubby hands together. “Welp. I'm gonna wash up before dinner.”

Sora and Roxas take that as a hint that they're allowed to get off of the couch. Sora takes a minute to stretch while Roxas heads straight for the kitchen. “You want us to go ahead and throw the pizza in now, or?” Sora asks Leon. He checks the time on the oven clock and is amazed by how late it is already until he remembers it's off by about six hours.

“Yeah,” Leon says as he's shucking off his over-shirt. The t-shirt he's got on underneath is still flawlessly clean, if a little bit sweaty. “I'm just gonna jump in the shower. Should take me, like, five minutes.”

“'Kay.” Sora follows Roxas into the kitchen as Leon goes upstairs. His sneakers squeak on the white vinyl flooring, and he talks to Roxas as he's opening up the freezer. “We did Supreme last night, right?” He sorts through their massive stack of frozen pizzas. Someone should really re-organize the freezer. A bag must have popped open 'cuz there's frozen corn everywhere. “Do you wanna do Hawaiian or Meat Lovers?” He looks at some of the other stuff they've got in here. Should he microwave a vegetable? When's the last time they had a vegetable? Let's see. There's... spinach. Ew. Peas and carrots. Meh. There's the bag of corn that exploded. That's probably still good. Bagel bites. They could do an appetizer. Would that be dumb? Is it stupid to have pizza before pizza? “Roxas?”

He pulls his head out of the freezer. Roxas is sitting at the kitchen table with his back to him.

“Roxas.” Sora says his name again but Roxas doesn't turn, doesn't answer him, doesn't stop texting. Just keeps sitting there with his back turned and his nose in his phone, tapping away.

Guess Sora's two seconds of acknowledgment are over.

Oh well.

They were fun while they lasted.

.

A few hours later, Sora's alone with his thoughts.

Sora hates being alone with his thoughts. They always circle back to Her.

_Who's your favorite superhero?_

_Who's my favorite superhero?_

_Yeah._

_Let's see... Probably... Superman._

_Superman?_

_Uh-huh._

_Why?_

_Well, because he's handsome. And he's smart. And he's strong, and he's a gentleman._

_Oh._

_Who's your favorite superhero?_

_Leon._

_Leon?_

_Yeah._

_Is Leon a superhero?_

_Yeah. I like when he throws me._

_Leon, have you been throwing your brother?_

_I throw both of them. They like it._

_Please don't throw your brothers._

_I throw them on the couch. It's soft._

_Okay, well. Throw gently._

_I always throw gently._

_Why don't you ask Leon who's his favorite superhero?_

_Leon, who's your favorite superhero?_

_Me._

_Tch._

_What? I'm a superhero. Roxas said so._

_Yeah, well you're his favorite. You can't have the same favorite. _

_Says who?_

_Says me._

_You don't make the rules._

_Just pick a different one, please._

_Fine... Uh-_

_And I absolutely do make the rules._

_You do make the rules._

_Thank you._

_Spiderman._

_Why Spiderman?_

_'Cuz he's funny._

_I like Spiderman._

_Everybody likes Spiderman._

_That's a good choice._

_Thanks._

_Sora. Who's your favorite superhero?_

Roxas barges into his room without knocking. “Did you take my Tame Impala shirt?”

Sora bolts upright.

Roxas stares at him strangely. He must not have been expecting to walk in on Sora starfished out on his bed and staring expressionlessly at his ceiling fan while snapping his fingers spasmodically to the beat of no music.

Sora stares back at him until the question registers. “I don't even know who that is,” he says blankly.

Roxas glances around his room distastefully. “Right. I forgot you still listen to Eminem.” He spends a minute poking around anyway, even though Sora's _just_ told him that he doesn't have it. It isn't until he's opened and shut all of Sora's dresser drawers that he accepts that Sora might actually be telling the truth and stops searching. He takes another judgmental scan of Sora's décor and hums cryptically before he speaks to Sora again. “I found my jeans in here earlier. Stop taking my shit.”

“I didn't,” Sora says with mild annoyance. Roxas cruises leisurely over to his window. “But thanks for coming into my room with no permission.”

“You're welcome,” Roxas says indifferently. He raises Sora's blinds.

Sora climbs off of his bed. “What are you doing?” he demands as Roxas slides the window open.

Roxas doesn't spare him a second glance. “What does it look like I'm doing?” He dislodges the screen from Sora's window with one confident, practiced kicked.

Sora comes to the window while Roxas is ducking out of it. “Where the hell are you going? It's ten-thirty.” He watches in disbelief as Roxas picks his way toward the edge of the roof. He sticks his whole top half out of the window to hiss after him, “What do I tell Leon?”

Roxas lowers his ass to the shingles. He scoots forward until his legs are dangling off the lip of the roof and shrugs before rolling onto his stomach. “I dunno. Make it good. Bye.” He pushes himself backward until he's hanging off the roof by his fingers. He dangles down the side of the house for a moment then releases his grip, dropping skillfully into a bush.

Sora watches with his jaw hanging slack as he saunters away from the house, walks casually down the street and disappears around the corner. “Dude, what the fuck?” he murmurs to himself.

“Hey.” He nearly jumps out of his skin when Leon materializes in his doorway.

Sora slams his head against the pane as he jolts back from the window, whirls around to face him with wide eyes. “Hey, Leon,” he says too loudly.

Leon's giving him the same look Roxas gave him when he first walked in. “What's up?” he says slowly.

Sora looks back at the window. Brilliantly, he goes with the first explanation that pops into his head. He turns back to Leon and says, “There was a bird.” Nice.

“Okay.” Leon turns his attention to the window. “So where's your screen?”

“It flew into the window,” Sora tells him. “The screen fell off.” Man, he sucks at lying. “It was big.”

“Alright,” Leon says dubiously. He crosses his arms. “Did you say something to Roxas?”

Oh, god. “No,” Sora lies.

“You sure?” Leon narrows his eyes.

“Yeah. Why?” Sora feigns ignorance while sliding his window shut.

Leon leans against the doorframe. “'Cuz he locked himself in his room again and he won't fuckin' answer me.”

Sora shrugs the most casual shrug he's ever attempted to shrug before. “Yeah, well, he's a twelve-year-old girl.” He goes and sits on the foot of the bed.

“Yeah.” Leon has a momentary zone-out while he scratches his chin. The five o'clock shadow is real. He looks back at Sora. “You're sure you didn't do anything?”

Sora shakes his head. “If I did he wouldn't tell me.”

“Right.” Leon considers him intensely, and for a second Sora's afraid he's going to call him out but instead he uncrosses his arms and says, “You need to get that shit worked out. I'm tired of hearin' you two bitch at each other.”

“I've tried!” Sora protests.

Leon lifts his hands peacefully. “Okay,” he says. “I believe you.” He lingers in Sora's doorway for a few moments longer, snapping his fingers together when he thinks of something else to say. “You get your homework done?”

“Yes,” Sora lies again.

“Good.” There's another short pause before Leon says, “Well, I'm hittin' the sack. Just wanted to say goodnight.”

“Night,” Sora returns, drawing his feet up off of the ground to sit cross-legged. He gives Leon what he hopes is a reassuring smile and wishes with as much brotherly love as he can muster that he would get out of his room already.

Leon nods. “G'night,” he says once more before he steps back into the dark hallway, clicking Sora's door shut behind him.

Sora ragdolls back onto his mattress with an enormous sigh. “Roooxaaas,” he groans, childishly kicking his legs. “You friggin' toenail.”

 

* * *

 

“Calypso raises an interesting point when she's speaking to Hermes. Can anyone tell me what that point is?”

_Cyclone._

“Anyone?”

_Omen._

“Anyone at all?”

 _Menace?_ _No. That's a bad guy name._ _Havoc?_

“Come on. Somebody take a stab at it. There are no wrong answers.”

 _No, he's pretty sure that's been done already._ _Or maybe it hasn't._

“Well, actually there are wrong answers. I am looking for one answer in particular, so I guess that would make all the other ones... wrong.”

 _Is Havoc an X-Man?_ _Is there an X-Man called Havoc?_

“Somebody.”

_Is the singular of X-Men, X-Man?_

“Guys, please don't make me call on someone.”

_He never cared about the X-Men._

“It's only the first week. If this is how our discussions are gonna go, it's gonna be a _rough_ year.”

 _Maybe he needs an honorific._ _Captain Something._

“Yes! In the back! Ummm. Sophie? Is it Sophie?”

 _General Something._ _Is he allowed to do that?_

“Close. Selphie.”

_Is that stolen valor?_

“Selphie. Forgive me.”

_Is Shadow too generic?_

“It's fine. Um. Is it feminism?”

_Oh, shit. Shadow is a hedgehog._

“Yes! What about feminism?”

_Nevermind._

“Is she kind of talking about, like... Is it like a double standard sort of thing?”

 _Damn, this is hard._ _How do people name babies?_

“In what sense is it a double standard?”

_He could never name a baby._

“Okay. So in, like, Greek mythology or whatever-”

 _He'd probably name it something stupid._ _Like Chainsaw._

“-there’s, like… a billion different stories about women being, like-”

_Actually, Chainsaw would be pretty good. Write that one down._

“-raped or whatever. And abducted and stuff. And it's basically a whole bunch of the male gods being really really gross and, like, nobody caring. And so, like, she's basically calling them out and saying, 'Hey. That's not fair.'”

_Ooo. The Human Chainsaw. Nah. That's way too cool._

“'Like, you guy gods get to run around all the time literally raping women. Which is super uncool.'”

_Riptide._

“'Like, I'm really really tired of you giving me crap for liking this guy.'”

_Eh. That sounds like an Aquaman sidekick. Ripcurl._

“'Because I know that if I was a guy then you, like… wouldn't care.' If that makes sense.”

_Wait. That's clothes._

“Excellent. That's exactly what she's saying.”

_That's, like... beach clothes._

“Do you have anything you'd like to add to that?”

_Ripoff's kind of funny._

“In the blue shirt.”

_He’s not sure he wants it to be funny, though._

“My friend staring at the wall.”

_Oh, shit._

Sora looks up and everyone's looking at him.

The teacher smiles at him from where he's sitting on a desk – an empty one that he pulled from one of the rows and placed in the front, sat in it the wrong way round with his ass on the writing-part and his feet in the sitting-part. The time-honored 'I'm-a-cool-teacher'-move. “Hi,” he says.

Sora smiles back sheepishly. “Hi.”

“Thinkin' about Odysseus?” (God, what is this guy's name?) asks.

“Oh my god.” Sora shakes his head. He's great with these types. “Like, all the time.”

“I know the feeling.” He's a young-ish guy with light-colored eyes and a long dark ponytail. Nikes. Visible ear piercing. _Very_ 'I'm-a-cool-teacher.' “Wait until after class, though. Okay?”

He sinks down in his chair. “Yeah.”

Cool Teacher claps his hands loudly together and once again addresses the class. “Alright. Let's talk a little more about what happened in the _Iliad._ ”

.

Third period ends and Sora slogs down the hall. That senior shine Kairi talked about has all but worn off and school just feels like school again. The first week isn't even over yet.

He almost feels cheated. They made it look so fun in High School Musical 3.

The crowd starts to thin as they near the fifth minute of their seven-minute class break, so there's little traffic in front of his locker. He's so devoid of energy that he momentarily forgets how to operate a combination lock. Just stands there staring at it, reconsidering his will to live.

“Odysseus again?” a voice says.

Sora turns his head.

It's Riku. Standing in front of his open locker just a few down from Sora's, regarding him with placid disinterest.

His brain reboots.

Sora has spent his entire high school career desperately wanting to be Riku's friend. He's a decidedly cool guy despite being only marginally popular. He's been in Sora's English class every year since the beginning of high school. He's snarky and funny and down-to-earth and self-possessed. He wears cool shoes and cool t-shirts and goes cool places when school lets out to climb really big cool rocks. His name inexplicably shows up on the Homecoming King ballot every year thanks to a sizable influx of votes from a completely anonymous yet extremely well-organized cult following, and every year he has to go Coach Farron's office himself and request to have it removed. As far as Sora's concerned, he's pretty much the coolest guy in the whole school.

And he has toned arms and pretty hair.

And Sora kind of wants to know what he looks like naked.

For comparative purposes.

To determine whether he should be jealous or not.

Completely heterosexual curiosity.

“Huh?” Sora says intelligently.

Oh, and interacting with him turns Sora into a big dumb asshole.

“I just noticed you were zoning out.” Riku lets his backpack slide off of his shoulder and onto the floor. He's wearing a Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem shirt. “Is it because you're thinking about Odysseus again?”

Odysseus.

Oh.

“Oh,” Sora says. “No. Just-” Has he been staring too long? He's probably been staring too long. This is an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. He pivots robotically and starts opening his locker. “Tired.”

“You do realize it's the first week?” Riku squats down and starts digging through his bookbag. “Still a little early in the year for ‘tired.’”

Sora's laugh is fake and too loud. “Yeah.” He unzips his own backpack in a hurry. If he can get away quickly enough, he won't have time to embarrass himself. “How was your summer?” he asks perfunctorily as he races to get his books switched out.

“Fine.” Riku raises himself unhurriedly from the ground. “You?”

“Oh.” English for History, Science for Math. “Y'know.” Fuck. No. Math was first period. Forget it. It's too late. “Fine.” He slams his locker shut, slings his bag over his shoulder without zipping it back up. “Later.” He exudes normalcy as he scurries away from his locker. Totally natural as he speed-walks past Riku, completely organic and everyday pace so–

“Congratulations on the new equipment.”

Sora screeches to a halt. He looks back over his shoulder and yep, Riku must be addressing him 'cuz he's looking straight at him.

Great. He can't wait to extend this interaction.

Surely it won't end in disaster.

“I heard you got your team funded,” Riku says. His tone is lukewarm.

“Oh.”

He's talking about lacrosse. Sora and his teammates made an appeal to the principal for extra money over the summer. The school's pretty tightfisted with athletics outside of football.

Sora shrugs. “Yeah. That's-”

He didn't think anyone else knew about it.

“It was nothing. Mika was super easy to convince.” He keeps talking as Riku turns his back and keeps sifting through his locker. “Just some sticks.”

Riku's not on any sports teams, as far as Sora knows. That he would congratulate Sora for an accomplishment like that seems kind of... exceptional. Almost as if...

“Jerseys, things like that.”

He's been asking after Sora?

“How did you hear about it?” Sora asks. His stomach feels jittery. He didn't know Riku knew who he _was_ , much less that he was interested in the things he was doing.

Riku shelves an Organic Chemistry textbook. “Because they took the money out of the school paper's budget.” His tone isn't the same as it was a second ago. He yanks a European History book out. His movements are sharp. “We have to fight Mika tooth and nail just to cover printing costs. The money you took was gonna pay for our field trip to the Port City Gazette.” He shoves the book into his bag and swiftly draws the zipper shut. Closes his locker with a little too much force and then twists back around on Sora. “But it's nice to know all you had to do was waltz in and ask for him to give it to you.” The stony expression on his face suggests to Sora that he does not, in fact, believe that this is a nice thing to know.

“Oh,” Sora says for what feels like the billionth time in this one conversation. This is _not_ the turn he was expecting this interaction to take. And he has no idea what the hell else to say other than, “Listen, I'm real sorry.”

“Are you,” Riku says mildly. He's reigned his tone back in to cool indifference, but his face is concentrated unbridled resentment. Sora can't remember the last time he saw that look on someone who isn't Roxas.

“Yeah,” Sora insists, flying into damage-control mode. “Yeah, I think that totally sucks. I love the school paper.”

Riku's not buying it. “Thought you thought it was gay.” He slides his backpack on.

“No!” Sora practically shouts. Fuck. Danger.

“Really?” This guy is a fortress. The toned arms have officially been crossed. Doom.

“No, it's really great!” He doubles down. He's doing a lot of effusive head-shaking.

“Because that's what you said in lit last year. You told Noel Kreiss it was gay and nobody reads it. I was sitting right in front of you,” Riku tells him matter-of-factly.

Destruction.

“That-” Sora falters. “Oh, man. Last year?” He pretends to rack his brain like he doesn't know what Riku's talking about despite the fact that he _vividly_ remembers it. Noel was trying to decide between becoming a student contributor or trying out for the lacrosse team. They served pizza in the lunchroom that day. “I was out of it, like-” God, this is a tough save. Sora's fighting a losing battle at this point. “I don't know what I was thinking... last year...” he slowly trails off then quickly changes his approach. “And that was before-” His voice cracks. Of course it does. He clears it and tries again. “You weren't in charge of it then, were you? So it's not like it was your fault.”

“I was in charge of it.”

That would explain the weird look Riku gave him in the hall right after class let out. Sora just assumed he had something on his face. That's usually the reason people give him weird looks.

“Really?” He feels like he's watching a train crash in slow motion. “I thought-” Only he's the one who's driving the train. “Thought it was someone else.”

Riku doesn't even look like he's angry anymore. He just seems disappointed.

Sora still doesn't shut his mouth. “When I said 'gay,' I meant like-” He tries to think of a way to put a positive spin on his casual homophobia. “I meant that it was like... really inclusive.”

“Uh-huh.” When Riku's eyes start to wander is when Sora realizes what he's mistaken for disappointment is actually boredom.

Which is kind of worse, actually.

Sora keeps going. “I think it's cool that we have that in our school.” He doesn't know why he's so sweaty. He shouldn't be this sweaty. “Progressive journalism. It's awesome.”

Riku looks him expressionlessly in the face. “I'm gonna walk away now,” he says coolly.

Nail in the coffin. Psychic homicide.

Whatever friendship Sora might have been holding out hope for, instantaneously liquefied.

“Yep,” Sora says with a smile. Nodding like an idiot as Riku brushes past him. Calls out after him, “Sorry. Again. About-”

Riku doesn't stop walking.

“Hang in there!” Sora shouts, raising his hand. He's drowned out by the ringing of the bell. He's late for Spanish. The Foreign Language hallway is at the other end of the school. He should probably start walking, but he's also kind of considering just laying down on the floor and dying. “Jesus Christ, that was bad,” he says aloud.

.

Sora drifts through practice on autopilot.

How was he supposed to know where Principal Mika was gonna pull the money from? It's not like it's Riku's money. It's taxpayer money. Taxpayer money that... had originally been promised to Riku.

But that was Mika's promise! If anyone deserves to get the third degree in the middle of the hallway, it's Mika!

“Nice save, Sora!” Coach J yells to him.

Of course, Mika is like... eighty years old or something. He could have just forgot, and then Sora can't really blame him. Because, like, Leon forgets stuff all the time. And he's twenty-seven. God knows how much stuff you forget when you're two… _three_ times that age.

Then again, nobody's made him retire yet. So he's been deemed 'all-there' enough to keep being Principal. And if he's together enough to run a school, he should be together enough to remember the promises he makes to students.

“Sora! Yes!” Coach lifts his arms up over his head.

Sora wonders what he's gonna be like when he's eighty. Probably dead. Both of his grandparents kicked off in their fifties.

His dad's parents could still be alive. Whoever they are. They never bothered to introduce themselves.

Then again, their son didn't either.

Could be he just never told them he had a kid. Or. Two kids.

Could be that _he_ didn't even know.

No, that's... That can't be right. She wouldn't have hid something like that.

That's not who she was.

“Hope! Watch Sora!” Coach booms over to the sidelines. “When he graduates, I want you to play exactly like he's playing right now!”

“Yessir!” calls back the freshman on the bench.

Coach blows a half-toot on his whistle. “Tidus! If you don't score on Sora, you're grounded!”

Tidus slows to a stop midfield. “Aw, what?” he shouts back, before Wakka body-checks him off of his feet.

She'd know what to do about the Riku situation. And the Roxas situation.

There wouldn't even be a Leon situation if she was still around. He would have gone to college, gotten a desk job that pays more. Maybe he'd even be married.

There used to be a girl that would come around every now and again. Nice girl. Wore sweaters and brought them pints of ice cream most of the time. Think her family owned an ice cream shop. For a minute he and Roxas thought Leon'd ask her to move in.

Doesn't know what happened to her.

Sora stops another incoming goal and Coach J swings his clipboard through the air like a sword. “Hot damn!” he whoops. “You boys are _on it!_ We are gonna _own_ this season!”

Her birthday's coming up pretty soon.

He's not sure if he wants to see Her.

.

Sora's still stewing when they get back to the locker room. He sit and zones out in front of his locker while his teammates talk about balls.

“That's why I can't sleep naked,” Vaan says as he stashes his stick. “I don't like it when my balls touch my leg.”

“You're supposed to sleep with a girl so you can tuck your balls in between _her_ legs.” Noel's wrestling with his cleats. He always takes them off without untying them and then bitches about having to untie them when he wants to put them on again.

“Aw, man.” Wakka pauses halfway to the shower to flash his million-dollar grin. “ _That's_ why I can't get a date. My balls don't reach that far.”

" _Dude._ ”

Sora jumps when a pair of shoulder pads slam down in the space next to him.

When he looks up Tidus is staring down at him with his head cocked strangely and his hands suspended, palms facing the ceiling.

“Hi,” Sora says absently.

“ _Hi,_ ” Tidus returns. He's miffed. “What the fuck, bro? You couldn't let me land a goal once?”

Sora squints in confusion. He's fairly sure that he did. He always make sure to...

He forgot to miss any balls.

Sora always pretends to miss at least one catch per game and more during practice. He was so stuck inside his own head that it totally slipped his mind that he’s only supposed to be really good at lacrosse and not really, really, stupid-amazingly good at lacrosse.

He thought he heard Coach yelling at him.

“Oh.” Sora glances around the locker room. Most of the guys are minding their business, but Hope, who hasn’t learned how to do that yet, is staring at them.

He quickly looks away when he Sora meets his eyes.

Sora looks back at Tidus. “Sorry. I was really in my element.”

“Yeah. You were awesome.” Tidus's words are complementary but his face is still ticked off. “Just try to be a little less awesome in front of my dad, alright?” He opens up his locker and shrugs his shirt off over his head. “He already wants to disown me. If I stop putting points on the board, he'll put me up for adoption.”

“Sorry,” Sora says again, watching Tidus use his jersey to wipe the sweat from his face.

“It's cool,” Tidus sighs, toweling off his armpits. He offers his fist to Sora.

Sora punches it in. 

 

* * *

 

Watching Leon sleep feels really creepy.

Somehow the tights make it feel even creepier.

Sora's standing in the darkened hallway, peeking into Leon's bedroom through his cracked-open door. It's not really something he ever pictured himself doing. He just _really_ wants to make sure Leon's asleep before he sneaks out.

Fortunately Leon snores, so he doesn't have to stand there for long. He slowly pulls the door back closed and creeps back toward his room.

There's a light seeping out from under Roxas's door which means he must still be awake. Sora doubts he'll even notice he's gone.

Sora shuts and locks his bedroom door. It's a few minutes after midnight. He opens up his window and lets the cool night air creep in.

He doesn't know why he's so nervous.

He can see Kairi's window from his window, across the street and one house over.

“It's just a test run,” he says to himself, before climbing out onto the roof.

From on top of the house he can plot his course to the train tracks. The neighborhood is small and cramped, more like a couple rows of old, squat houses than an actual subdivision. There was obviously no planning involved in its development, an assortment of Craftsmans and colonials and even a few trailers, haphazardly arranged like jagged teeth in a crooked mouth. All built in the shadow of a set of elevated train tracks.

Bouncing between roofs is as easy as playing hopscotch. Sora can't fly but he can run fast and jump far, even glide along walls for short distances and all of it's as natural as breathing. When he _really_ gets going he can generate a field, a soft purple glow that tingles around his hands and feet. He likes to think that it greases him up for a smoother ride but he hasn't put that theory to the test yet.

It's a hop and a skip up the concrete support beams, and only a few minutes' wait until he sees lights in the distance.

This is the part he's the most worried about. It's one thing to run up the side of a building. It's a completely different thing to jump on top of a moving train. If he jumps too soon or too short or too wide, it's splat city. He could land a fall from this height easy, and even if he didn't his bones would mend themselves in a day or two. He gets sucked under the wheels of a moving train, he gets turned into applesauce. And no amount of time is gonna fix that.

The train's approaching quickly. Sora shakes himself loose.

_Don't overthink it, don't over-complicate it. You'll do fine if you don't overthink it._

It rounds the corner. A little over a thousand feet away and closing the distance fast.

_Remember how good you were at practice? That's 'cuz you weren't thinking about it._

Ten seconds, maybe. Maybe more like eight. God, he hopes that's a good estimate.

_You're gonna ride a train. You ride the train every day._

It's starting to get loud.

_Be cool. You got this._

Six seconds. No. Now it's eight. Better to jump late and miss it then too early and fucking die.

_You're not gonna fucking die. Be cool. Don't think._

The headlight's illuminating the track in front of him. He lowers his center of gravity. Five seconds.

_Just a little hop. You're a superhero, remember?_

His heart is racing. It's loud. And it's close.

_Cool._

Two seconds.

_Sora, cool._

One second.

_Cool._

Air in his face as it screams his way past him. He's holding his breath. It's so goddamn loud. He changes his mind but his feet don't get the memo.

He makes the jump.

_COOL!_

.

.

.

He opens his eyes. It's _so_ cool.

He's on his stomach on the roof of the train as it speeds down the track. The metal is cold through his suit. He pushes himself up to his knees and sits back on his heels, looks ahead so he can watch as the front of the train bores a hole through the dark like the nose of a needle. Cool wind in his ears as it whips past his head, riding on the back of a great silver beast that rattles louder than he can think and echoes through his bones. He laughs out loud and shouts, “YES!” and he throws his arms out like they're wings. And he finally understands what's so great about that scene from _Titanic._

The lights of the city shine stupendously in the near distance. Glittering in inky soup like the shards of a broken Mistic bottle, or the flecks in Kairi’s lip gloss. Gleaming like a cluster of a million little planets, stunning and true and when they twinkle it’s like Port City winking an eye at him, telling him she expects his arrival. Liquid beads of light spilling out in all directions and he feels like he might become one of them. And as the train chugs closer to the heart of the city, he infiltrates their ranks. Watches them speed by above and below and all around and deep inside him. And he hears and he feels them, they all beat together.

They’re home and they’re his, these lights of the city.

He almost doesn’t want to get off the train. But he does, when it starts to slow down by degrees in preparation for its arrival to Downtown City Station. He jumps off before it goes through platform tunnel because he doesn’t particularly feel like being decapitated, makes a quick catlike jump and falls about a story or two before touching down on the roof of the PCNN building. Rolls out of the landing because it’s not quite a perfect stick, tumbles ass-over-teakettle and winds up flat on his back. He spends a minute just laying there with his heart racing, basking in the adrenaline before he climbs to his feet.

A quick peek over the edge of the roof tells Sora he’s probably around twenty stories off the ground. Cars look smaller than matchboxes and people are even smaller. All buzzing around down there with little concern about who or what might be watching them from hundreds and hundreds of feet above. It’s a disorienting kind of voyeurism so he only looks for a few seconds. He’s going to have to get used to it if he wants to play guardian, but he’s sure it can wait.

The building that neighbors the one he’s on top of now is two or three stories taller, sits somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet away. It looks like it’s an easy enough jump. Sora could probably make it from a standstill. He backs up anyway, lines his heels up with the ledge on the north side of the roof and studies the other building’s face. Flat glass, no ledges. Modern skyscraper. Maybe not so easy after all. Sora scales buildings like you’d climb a mountain, only faster; he feels out the contours of the structure and uses them as leverage to propel himself up the side. To get up to this roof he’d have to jump straight up and grab hold of the edge of it, pull himself up – it’s possible, but he’d need a shit-ton of air and near-perfect execution to do it. But with no handholds or footholds, he’s got no Plan B. If he comes up short he’s gonna fall down, plummet those twenty-five stories to the cold sidewalk below and bust open like an overripe tomato.

So he passes on that building, moves on to consider his other options. There’s a hotel to the west of where he’s standing, old-looking and ornate with deep-set windows and decorative trim. Lots of stuff to grab onto, even if’s it a little bit taller than the other–

Wait.

Sora looks back at the first building. What if he…

What if he _ran_ up the side?

The soles on his suit are thin, but there’s traction. The laws of gravity pretty much still apply to him, for the most part, but it’s… different. If his purpley-glowies can keep him from falling off a wall when he’s gliding across it, shouldn’t they do the same if he runs up it instead?

Hm.

Only one way to find out, isn’t there?

Sora really shouldn’t experiment when he’s three hundred feet off the ground. But he also shouldn’t eat fast food. Or go outside without sunscreen. Or copy other people’s homework. But he does. He does all of those things and he hasn’t died yet. Besides. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

He’s sure it’ll work. He knows himself better than anyone. And he knows what he’s capable of. All he has to do is get some momentum going, and his glowy-purples will carry him straight to the top.

He starts from the east side of the roof, facing the old hotel. He sets off like a bullet, springboards effortlessly off the roof and rolls a flip in the air to propel himself across the gap. Gets a hand on one of the many window wells and his feet braced on the stone. Pushing up through those three limbs sends him _up_ , several yards of clearance before his next anchor point. Twenty-five, thirty feet vertically every second or so, super-strength and super-speed working in sync.

The topmost part of the hotel narrows until it’s almost a point, ends in a platform about five square feet in area with a lightning rod mounted in the center. Sora sees the barest flicker of light at the edges of his vision, the faint lilac aura of a field being generated but it’s not enough to do any work for him, he needs more speed. So he throws his weight forward and nearly nose-dives off the other side of the platform, shoots his left arm out and grabs hold of the rod right before he goes over. He uses the pole like an axle, keeps a tight grip as he runs around it once, twice, three times in a circle before he’s able to lift his feet off the ground and just spin on all that gathered inertia. Two or three rotations until everything is purple, warmth radiating from his hands and his feet and rolling across his skin.

Now he’s cooking with gas.

Sora plunges off the top of the hotel. He does a quick flip about halfway through his fall just for style points then bends his knees before he hits the roof of the PCNN building, right back where he started. His field softens the landing, just a little bit of buffer to reduce the shock of impact. He somersaults up out of it, like the first time but better, and doesn’t stop moving. Turns a sharp left and makes a beeline for the south side of the roof.

As Sora jumps off the roof of PCNN and soars feet-first toward the glass façade, the only thought that crosses his mind is _Hm. Wonder what kind of building this is._

It’s an office building.

He knows this because he goes straight through the window and goes crashing into one of the cubicles.

It doesn’t feel awesome.

He doesn’t realize that he’s closed his eyes until he opens them and finds himself laying in a pile of shattered glass and scattered paperwork and broken computer parts. An alarm is blaring loudly in his ears. Shit.

Sora clambers to his feet and takes a quick sweep of the room. Empty. Duh. It’s like 2AM.

But the alarm’s probably alerted someone remotely. Someone might show up.

Or there might be a security guard. Somewhere, on a different floor.

He probably shouldn’t stick around.

He looks at the damage. One huge pane of glass missing from the window, almost all of it lying in shards sprinkled all across the patterned carpet. He took out not one, but two cubicles on the end of one row, smashed into out and smashed out of the other and destroyed everything in the process – both desktop monitors, both desk chairs, somebody’s picture frame holding a cute picture of a dog in a lobster costume. Damn. Maybe he should leave a note.

Sora swipes a stack of pink Post-It notes off the top of a nearby desk along with a ballpoint pen. He uncaps the pen and tries to write with it but it’s out of ink. He curses under his breath and looks around for another writing implement. Has to go surprisingly far down another row until he finds one sitting out, runs back to the wreckage and scribbles _I’m sorry!_ across the topmost note of the pad. He tears it off and tries to decide where he should adhere it.

On the dog? Tch. No. That’s disrespectful. He already broke the little guy’s frame. Maybe by the window. Or… no. It’s pretty windy out tonight. He doesn’t want it getting blown away.

He ends up sticking it to the broken screen of one of the monitors that he broke. Stands back looking at it with his hands on his hips and a grimace on his face. “Yikes,” he says.

Somebody bursts through the door to the office and Sora almost shits.

It’s a massive guy in a security uniform. Fade haircut and arms as thick as tree trunks, a cast on his right arm and a gun in his left. His eyes find Sora immediately and he raises the firearm on him, yells something that Sora can’t hear over the shrieking of the alarm.

Sora doesn’t ask him to repeat himself. He fucking books it. Runs straight for the window and doesn’t look before he leaps, jumps straight back to the roof of the PCNN building and just _goes_. He doesn’t look back to see if the guard is following him. (He knows he could never be caught by a regular person, but that guy was not regular. That guy was a Terminator. For real. The biggest pair of legs Sora’s ever seen on another human being.) He hears a loud metallic clang while he’s running when a bullet bounces off an HVAC box to his right. Jesus Christ, running faster.

Straight across from the south to the north end and straight off the side, Sora jumps several stories down to the roof of what appears to be an apartment building. There’s fairy lights and a picnic table and a rooftop garden that he accidentally tramples as he’s running for the next roof. Sirens coming from somewhere below. Those can’t be for him. Surely. That’s way too quick of a response for the cops in this city. He jumps a series of narrow roofs in a short row of townhouses. He’s nearing the end of the block.

The last building on the street is a department store. Sora leaps through the giant ‘o’ in the huge lighted letter sign of the store’s name that sits atop the roof. He doesn’t hear any more gunshots but that doesn’t slow him down. He vaults off the store’s roof and aims for the upscale Mediterranean restaurant across the street.

Sora realizes about halfway through the jump that he's not gonna make it to the front of the building. He'll wind up seven or eight feet short and so he changes his trajectory and aims instead for a streetlight, and once he comes down he's able to springboard off of it and make the rest of the distance. Gets to the top and keeps running.

And he keeps running.

And he keeps running.

He runs for several blocks, well after he’s away from the danger. At first it’s nervousness. Then it’s just momentum. And then he’s in a groove.

There’s a hotel on the corner of Willoughby and Lindsey. Sora makes quick work of it.

From there it's an office building.

And then it's the Gazette building.

And another office building.

And then it's the Lillis building.

And then another hotel.

And then it's one that he doesn't even know what it is. All he knows is that he’s higher now than he was at the start, went from twenty-five to two and now he’s forty stories up again, thrumming head to toe and giggling like an absolute imbecile. Maybe it’s the altitude. Maybe he’s just happy he didn’t get shot.

Finally, Sora slows to a stop. He staggers over to a vent and plops his ass down on top of it, cackling deliriously. He whips his mask off over his head and gasps for a breath, then drops his head down between his knees and just keeps laughing. He laughs until his stomach hurts and there's tears in the corners of his eyes. And when it eventually starts to ebb, he lifts up his head. And he wipes off his tears and steadies out his breathing, residual giggles bubbling up out of him every few seconds until finally he's done.

“Oh, man,” he sighs, and shakes his head. Grinning from ear to ear. “This is a horrible idea.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a MASSIVE thank you to the lovely [TeaPlease](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaPlease) for beta-ing this chapter for me. you're a gem.
> 
>  _also i just want to note a couple things to prevent any massive confusion:_  
>  1) the story takes place in the fictional city of Port City, Illinois. it's kind of like Chicago without being Chicago much in the way that Gotham is NYC without actually being NYC. i didn't go with Twilight Town or Traverse Town or any other location from the games because it felt weird and i didn't want to :-)  
> 2) concerning Kairi's comment about Sora being tiny: it's actually a personal headcanon of mine that Kairi has a body type that is thicker and more athletic overall than how she appears in the games. kind of like Nani from Lilo and Stitch. so she doesn't have dysmorphia and Sora's not alarmingly thin or anything lmao. ya girl's just a little thicker in this universe  
> 3) i promise i don't hate Roxas lmfao. he sucks right now and that's intentional but it's a part of his character arc. so just hang in there
> 
> yes. thanks for reading, as always. and thanks for actually reading the chapter notes. stay sweet.


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